For a movie with no stars and no built-in audience, Neill Blomkatt’s District 9 is buzzing incredibly well. Sure, the Peter Jackson connection may have something to do with the interest and excitement, but I’d bet a lot of the traffic and talk being devoted to the film today is more due to how awesome it looks. And how well it’s being marketed, of course. But with the latest trailer, which arrived online yesterday, heating up the exposure and anticipation so immensely so quickly, could there be room for overkill? I actually don’t think so. This won’t be another disappointment a la Snakes on a Plane or Cloverfield, because it’s a more interesting premise, not just some cheap genre pic with heavy viral promotion.

Maybe I’m just allowing my expectations to get higher than usual, but I’m truly optimistic that this will actually be good. It’s dangerous territory for me to be getting in, and the film and its campaign are probably going to blow up in my face like that “can” of toxic material in the trailer. Oh well, what else do I have to look forward to next month? G.I. Joe? Inglourious Basterds? I gave up on my excitement for both of those long ago, and I want to be surprised by something out of nowhere. Unfortunately, modern movie distribution doesn’t allow for such complete surprises anymore, so this may be the closest thing I’ve got.

Let’s see what kind of buzz or buzzkill the blogs are inciting after the jump:
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The reactions to the new G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra trailer are, as expected, pretty negative. But it’s almost as if bloggers had their write-ups pre-written, because the thing is not that bad. Maybe I just have low expectations and so therefore wasn’t expecting much to begin with, but considering all the crap that movie blogs get excited about on a regular basis, I’m dubious. Those criticizing this trailer so harshly are obviously just going along with the fashion of trashing on this movie. I’m not saying it looks good, but I might actually prefer to see this than, say, the new Transformers sequel.

And if District 9, which does indeed look amazing via its new trailer, is actually “this year’s Cloverfield, then I might also prefer to see G.I. Joe than that, too. Of course, if we go by trailers alone and not presumptions, the little-known-about District 9, which appears to be a faux-documentary sci-fi flick, completely wins the fight over our summer moviegoing dollars. And I’m certainly not alone in seeing the Peter Jackson-produced movie as the champion today. Let’s compare the responses to each trailer, from the usual suspects:

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We can thank Christopher Guest for pulling her out of obscurity and casting her as a lesbian dog trainer in Best in Show. Or we can just thank her incredible talent for stealing scenes by way of riotous awkward comedy. Either way, this week we should remember to be thankful for Jane Lynch. You may have seen her recently in Role Models as the formerly coke-addicted founder of a mentoring organization. Or maybe you’ve seen her in The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Talladega Nights or Guest’s A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration. In most of her roles, she plays opposite the best comedians in the business, yet she still supplies her films with some of their most memorable moments. I can’t wait to see how she does against Meryl Streep in next year’s Julie & Julia, when she plays the Oscar-winner’s sister.

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This week, thanks to The Rocker, we can add another fictional band to the long list of music groups created solely for the movies. They’re called Vesuvius, and they’re an ‘80s hair band with a hit song titled “Promised Land.” As part of the film’s marketing, the track was offered as a free download for play on Rock Band (see the clip above). But if you ask me, the wrong tune was used in the promotion. Another song from the soundtrack, also credited to Vesuvius, is called “Pompeii Nights,” and it’s definitely the better of the two.

I’m not surprised, though. While most people favor the songs of Spinal Tap, a once-fictional band that has become popular enough to evolve into a “semi-fictional” performing act, I’ve preferred such gems as “The Whites of Their Eyes” by PEZ® People, from The Big Picture. Also co-written by This is Spinal Tap’s Christopher Guest and Michael McKean, and sung by McKean, this song is apparently so underrated that I can’t even find an audio sample, let along a YouTube clip of the fake band’s music video, which was directed by fictional filmmaker Lydia Johnson (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

Fortunately, for the benefit of this list, the rest of these under-appreciated tracks have a few fellow fans.

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This new bit of internet marketing for the forthcoming Tropic Thunder claims to be a trailer for a fake documentary about the making of the fictional movie that Tropic Thunder is also about the making of. Wait, what? On the one hand, I love the piling on of ridiculously self-referential layers, but on the other hand, isn’t this a bit confusing? Let me try this again, Tropic Thunder is a fictional film about a film production where the director decides to put his (fake) actors in real (fake) danger. And Rain of Madness is a fake mocumentary about the fake movie, or about the real movie about a fake movie?

Well, whatever the case may be, the above clip proves two things: One, Tropic Thunder would probably be better as a mockumentary, rather than a fiction film about a fiction film. And two, Danny McBride is hilarious: “I just beat nature today.”

Daniel Stamm’s A Necessary Death is sure to be one of the most talked about films at SXSW this year. At least I hope it is, because I’m dying to have a discussion or two about it. Here’s my endorsement, first, so that I might influence someone to see the film and in turn have someone to chat with about it: Anyone who considers him or herself a fan of non-fiction cinema needs to see A Necessary Death.

I should point out, of course, that this is not exactly a documentary itself. It is a narrative feature structured like a documentary (I hate to call serious faux docs mockumentaries, so I won’t), but it was indeed written and it was indeed cast and it was indeed acted out. But if you love non-fiction and hate fiction, don’t let that keep you from A Necessary Death. An actual documentary couldn’t say as much about the genre as this film does.
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Here are some quick reviews of two SDFF films that I watched via screeners before touching down in Denver, and the one film I managed to see in town before succumbing to jet lag/altitude exhaustion. Oddly and entirely accidentally, all three films have something to do with aging males and their identity crises.

Karl Rove, I Love You

A self-mocking psuedo-documentary from the mind of Dan Butler (a journeyman supporting actor best known for a recurring role on Frasier), Karl Rove, I Love You has far less to do with the titualar “ultimate supporting actor” than with the personal fallout of engagement in our super-polarized political culture. What begins as a documentary on Butler as the archetypical “invisible” character actor (he’s consistently compared to Philip Seymour Hoffman, only “less famous”) morphs into a document of Butler’s mid-life crisis passion project, a one man show designed to expose the world to the “Real” Karl Rove. Butler begins the project wanting to hit the Bush administration where it hurts, but slowly comes to empathise with Rove, turns his show into a mildly-satiric love-letter, and alienates his single-minded friends and collaborators in the process.

Not always laugh-out loud funny, but well-paced and consistently engaging, Karl Rove, I Love You uses the natural conflict between (pervasively and unquestioningly liberal, and largely openly gay) Hollywood and (socially conservative but morally ambiguous) Red State actors to explore how angry obsession can offer the same kind of madness, identity salvation and pure pleasure as romantic passion. But more interestingly, it’s also about breaking down a black-and-white cipher and finding a whole person. It always feels more like a sitcom than a credible documentary (and the last twenty minutes really push the limits of disbelief), but it’s just creepy enough to work.

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Pittsburgh, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006 before going straight to cable and DVD this year, is a mock documentary about Jeff Goldblum’s run starring in a production of The Music Man in his hometown. Some of the film is “real”; some of it is sketched to look real, ala Christopher Guest; some of it uses “real” situations, Borat-style, as the backdrop for improvisation. A stagehand captured in some of the latter antics is now suing to have her scene removed from the film.

Debbie Sue Croyle says she was never asked to sign a release, and in fact only learned of the film after it premiered on cable and “other people saw it and told her about it.” She says she is “humiliated” by her appearance in the film, because Goldblum used a double entendre in the scene in which she appears. But oddly, the actor is not named in suit: Croyle is suing the production companies that made the film, the film’s directors, and the Starz cable channel, for $4 million. Seems like a huge sum, considering the film had no theatrical release and all but flew under the radar of most non-Starz subscribers and non-Goldblum superfans. Still, it’s an interseting case; I’m fairly surprised the release form issue hasn’t come up before with higher-profile doc/com hybrids. More details here.